The Meaning in the Count: Making Life a Noncount Noun

When I really stop to think, my Conscious Day is spent counting. It starts out with counting and it ends with counting. Minutes left on my snooze alarm. Pounds on the bathroom scale. Dollars in my checking account. Minutes before I have to leave for work. Pages completed on my writing project. Calories. Fat grams. Minutes. Hours. Shots of coffee. Pieces of toast. Am I the only one who is consumed with and by counting?

Counting and measuring and weighing. Reality dictates that I take care of my health and that I maintain a healthy weight. That I pay my bills on time. That I be punctual at work. That I move my dream project forward. That I hold myself to some level of accountability concerning my food choices. That I caffeine-ate fully and properly each morning. That I try to stay under the speed limit when I am running late for work. That I care about things in life that involve the measuring and weighing by number.

I know me. Without counting, life would be a free-for-all that does not allow for any accountability to myself or to others. While I think on this, I search for the value, the meaning in the count. We have all wrestled with the concept of weighing quality over quantity. But even here . . . we are still measuring and weighing the benefits. We are taught to think that quality is more important than quantity. But still. Like the little girl that would rather have five pennies over one nickel, there are areas in my life where I tend to shoot for quantity.

Quantity in my hand. Quality of the moment. Where is the Real Value in the midst of the day and its ticking clock? Daily, I put my day on pause for five minutes of meditation. Are these five minutes worth more than five minutes spent watching silly videos on youtube? Research tells me that, yes, meditation is so good for us on so many levels. And I will continue to take those five to reset my inner self. But why do we judge ourselves so harshly when we aren’t doing that which is “good for us”? Yes, I know that I can lose that final ten pounds, but is it worth beating myself up each time I get on the scale? Am I really going to care, one way or the other, once I hit that Maui beach in December? After all, it’s difficult to be hard on yourself when you are living in paradise.

But being a linguist, I very much like the semantics that extend beyond grammatical agreements. For example, we English speakers agree to add the letter -s to most nouns to make them plural. Lest we get into the exceptions such as person/people, tooth/teeth, mouse/mice, and ox/oxen, we can agree that adding the letter -s to a noun will signify that we dealing with the Concept of More Than One.

And then there are those tricky count and noncount nouns and their plural forms or lack therein. According to the Purdue OWL, The Basic Rules for count and noncount nouns are as follows:

A count noun is one that can be expressed in plural form, usually with an “s.” For example, “cat—cats,” “season—seasons,” “student—students.” A noncount noun is one that usually cannot be expressed in a plural form. For example, “milk,” “water,” “air,” “money,” “food.” Usually, you can’t say, ‘He had many moneys’ . . .

Count nouns refer to things that exist as separate and distinct individual units. They usually refer to what can be perceived by the senses. Noncount nouns refer to things that can’t be counted because they are thought of as wholes that can’t be cut into parts. They often refer to abstractions and occasionally have a collective meaning.

There is simply so much cool stuff going on there. Quantity vs. quality. Count vs. noncount. We think of a life — a count noun — and we count the number of lives on the planet. But when we think of our our own life? We think “in terms of wholes that can’t be cut up into pieces.” It’s one whole life. It’s my life! And like grass, rice, and money . . . we don’t actually cut our own life up into pieces . . . even when we think in terms of annual events such as birthdays and anniversaries. It’s all one big whole that we truly prefer not to relegate to the Noun Category of Count. We want to make it count in the ways that are important . . . not in some grammatical or statistical way.

There is counting . . . and then there is making life count. As I go through the days and I count and I measure the pluralizations that I prioritize . . . I wonder. I wonder about the importance of quotas at work and pounds on the scale and hits on my website. I wonder about making my life count. So much to wonder about. Thank God that wonder is a verb in this context. Otherwise, I would be inclined to start counting the many wonders in the world around me.

My advice to self: Just live and give it your best in the moment. You’ve got this. While I appreciate the concepts of mindfulness and how important it is to be aware and to be positive, there is more. There is life as a noncount noun. It’s okay to count the little things as long as I remember the bigger picture. And sometimes it is so hard to keep sight of this enormous, huge, ginormous Universe of which I am but a tiny speck.

I think I answered my own Life Question About Counting. Stop counting. And when I do count — which I will surely continue to do — I will try to do so with wild abandon and appreciation for the abundance within life’s “separate and distinct individual units.”